After the long walk I almost felt exhausted, however, my feelings were still exiting because I had reached another destination, another place where I could visit for the first time, a new adventure where I could tell the other people about. I managed to get there without asking anybody for any direction, just my common sense, sense of direction (if I have got any, but I think I have some) and the train map that has got nothing to do with the road map.

I knew that I had arrived at the destination because there was a sign that was pointing at the entrance of Shibuya station. I entered a stair case inside a building, went up the stairs and the first thing that I noticed was that there was the entrance of a shopping centre. There were different shops and an escalator that was going to the floors below.

Picture 1: Down the escalator

Outside was already dark by at least 1 hour, however, the lights inside the shopping centre and those that were coming from the shops were illuminating the inside of the building in the same way that the lights illuminate the inside of the buildings when closer to Christmas, but without any of the Christmas decoration.

Shibuya Station

I kept walking tirelessly until I saw that the number of people were growing. I was entering a tunnel. That tunnel was narrow and had windows. I could see that this tunnel was actually a walking bridge and from the windows there was a beautiful view of tall buildings, the roads underneath and I could also see that the tunnel was going to have a left turn. After walking a few minutes, the tunnel started to get larger and the number of people increased by a large margin.

Businessmen, schoolgirls, schoolboys and people with shopping bags were filling the tunnel and I realised soon afterwards that I was inside the train station. This larger tunnel was leading to the train platforms. People were entering the platforms from left and right. I think the time was between 6-7. Tokyo Shibuya rush hours and there was a lot still to come.

Better than Piccadilly Circus

After I had passed all the platforms from the tunnel, the building took me to a staircase leading on the street level. Step by step I managed to reach the exit and another staircase that led me to Shibuya Hachiko Square. The square was crowded and I noticed that in the middle of the square there was a statue of a dog. A lot of people seemed very interested about that statue and were taking photos and selfies with the dog.

In front of me I noticed a pedestrian crossing and I could see on the corners on the other side of the crossing some very interesting buildings, some of them with a very interesting shape. I took some photos of the buildings in front of me and then I walked closer to the pedestrian crossing and took more photos.

Picture 4: QFRONT building

Pictures 5 and 6: Beauty of the buildings

Pictures 7 and 8: More from Shibuya

The buildings were magnificent, especially at that time, when the sky was dark and the lights were standing out beautifully.

One of the corners of the crossing reminded me of Piccadilly Circus in London, a better version of Piccadilly. It had a screen with a video showing an advert and other LED adverts on the building. Almost everything was in Japanese characters.

Picture 9: Sibuya’s Piccadilly Circus style

Another of the building had a Starbucks on the first floor (or second floor if you live in an Asian country). The tallest of the building was the most unique of the buildings. The bottom part was looking like that it had cubes with glass windows one on top of the other. The cubes were not parallel to each other, one was moved towards this direction and others moved towards other directions.

Picture 10: Cube Building

Wow!!!

After taking a number of pictures, I moved to the edge of the pedestrian crossing.

Wow!

I thought to myself.

Wow! Wow!! Wow!!!

What has fascinated me was to see all the pedestrian traffic lights going green all at the same time and hundreds/thousands of people crossing the road all at the same time. In pictures it looks beautiful, but for real, watching the reaction of that large number of people crossing the road live it really gave me a wonderful impression of the place. Something that I have never seen before – ever. It was just fantastic.

Picture 11: Shibuya’s famous pedestrian crossing

My experience in Tokyo was just getting better and better. The only thing I felt sorry was for not crossing the road alongside all those people. Everyone is an individual, however, at that crossing everyone looks the same. I wondered what was the proportion of people crossing the road just because they needed to cross it and the people that were crossing the road just to try the feeling, maybe once in a lifetime.

Next adventures

I wasn’t feeling hungry yet, so I decided to go back to Shibuya train station. Jump on a train and then go back to Harajuku because I felt that I had to take some photos (which I had posted in ‘Cosplay Hunting in Harajuku‘). After that I felt hungry and decided to go to eat in Shinjuku.

After Ginza and before going to Harajuku, I decided to go to Akihabara by myself to have a look around and have lunch there. I wanted to take some photos at maid girls that were handing out leaflets for the maid cafes, but they told me that I was not allowed to do that. So I decided not to take photos in case they think that I am a stalker. After a short walk I decided to move away from the ‘maid area’.

Electric Building

Leaving the ‘maid area’ didn’t mean leaving Akihabara, but going to discover something different. As I mention in the ‘Akihabara: The Electric Town‘ post, I entered the building that has stairs that, from outside they look like Super Mario Bros’ pipes, but this time I decided to discover what was hidden on the other floors.

It didn’t take long to reach that building from where I was, to tell you the truth, I was there within 5 minutes.

Funny Looking Laptops

Once entered into that building, I took the ‘ pipe escalator’ to the other floors to see if they were going to sell items different from those found in UK. The most of the things are the same or very similar, however, what impressed me a lot was the thickness of the Japanese laptops. The screen part was about the same, however, the block of the laptop that holds the keyboard was much thicker.

I was really surprised about that and I was wondering why they were as thick. However, the thing that impressed me more than anything else was the design of the laptops. The design was far from futuristic, surprisingly, the design was very static, more similar to the old laptops that used to sell in the early 2000’s. For a country like Japan, where everyone think is ahead of the times, this has surprised me a lot.

Raw Egg

After a thorough investigation of the store, I decided to go nearby for a lunch. I found somewhere cheap where to eat, one of those places that can be found anywhere throughout Tokyo.

After choosing something from the vending machine, I went to look for a seat and waited for the waitress to come with the food to my table. The food I order was below the 600 yen mark and it included a bowl of rice, some sliced pork on top and an egg still inside the shell, I thought it was a boild egg.

I started eating the sliced pork and the rice first, then when the waitress came along, I asked how to eat the egg. The waitress she said to open it on top of the rice and so I did. When I broke the egg, I realised that it was still raw. I have never eaten in all my life a row egg. I thought if I was going to mix it with the hot rice, the egg was going to cook by itself. I was wrong but I decided to eat it anyway. Half a year later I found out that eating raw egg was part of the Japanese culture, in fact, Japanese eggs would not harm the health due to its freshness. ‘Tamago gohan’ is the raw egg served on top of a bowl of rice and then eaten, usually with a bit of Japanese soy sauce and a pinch of salt.

Really Hentai

After finished eating, I went to walk around the area to see what other things the place was offering. I turned into a narrow street and to my surprise I saw a 6 storie building ) that was selling exclusively only school girl uniforms. The six floors include the ground floor (in Japan the ground floor is considered as first floor unlike western countries) and in addition had the basement. Either that depato (department store in Japanese romanised) was selling uniforms for schools, or more probably it was selling uniforms mainly for cosplaying, or for the maids that were working in Akihabara, or maybe for certain men in order to satisfy their hentai fantasies, or maybe for all of those reasons. I could see on the windows some of the school uniforms displayed and on the ground floor there were some kids’ size anime stickers of school girls and magazine pages.

I was really surprised that a department store so big was selling just schoolgirl uniforms. I was really tempted to have a look inside but I decided to go against my temptation just in case people thought I was a hentai. Even though I was in the country famous for hentai (perverts, at least Japan is seen this way by westerners), I still didn’t know much about Japanese culture to consider to enter that store.

Hentai Building?

Tokyo never stopped fascinating me. Tokyo is a really marvellous city, even though many people think that Japan is a very strange country. At the end of the day I respect their culture and I would never change is because is so different from the west and I was sure that Japan was hiding more fascinating things and my staying in Japan had just started. (Next).

After visiting Mitsukoshi and the sorrounding area I decided to go to Ginza. I went there because the train map highlighted Ginza as one of the main areas in Tokyo.

Once I got out from Ginza station, I realised straight away that the area was posh. In fact, as soon as I went on the pavement from the station, I saw a massive department store called Matsuya Ginza

Picture 1: Matsuya Ginza Department Store

By the look of it, it looked like it would contain very expensive products, similar to those seen at Mitsukoshi department store. I decided not to enter that building on that occasion.

Other main shops

As I walked along the pavement, I could only see big expensive department stores and designer stores ranging from Tiffany to Gucci to Luis Vuitton and so on. I had to save money because I had to stay in Japan for 1 year without a job, so I decided not to buy anything. That was not the only reason why I didn’t buy anything. The other reason was because I could buy the same exact items back in London and there is no point to buy them there on my first day in Japan. I wanted to fully dive into the Japanese culture, that was one of the reasons why I choose Japan as my destination for my year abroad.

Picture 2: Tiffany Shop in GinzaPicture 3: A little bit of GinzaPicture 4: Japanese Style tooPicture 5: Better view to the Japanese style

33 Degrees!!!!!!!!!!

The temperature on that day just before the middle of September was very high and I felt very hot even thought I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

I just had a quick look at the area. And while I was approaching the train station to go to my next adventure, I saw almost on the top of a tall building a display indicating the temperature at that moment, the time was around 12 o’clock and the temperature was 33 degrees celsius. Surprised, I said: wow!!! I remembered that when I left London for Japan a few days earlier the temperature was about 10-11 degrees celsius. That was a massive difference in temperature dividing 2 of the greatest cities in the world set apart by thousands of miles.

Picture 6: Building recording the temperaturePicture 7: Clear display of the temperature

Due to the high temperature in that place, I felt my body sweating and became hungry. By the look of the area I thought if I was going to buy something to eat there I was going to break the bank so I decided to change destination and to leave Ginza after a short walk. (Read my next adventure)

As soon as I left Mitsukoshi I decided to have a quick walk in the area surrounding. To my surprise, I managed to find traditional shops and restaurants (picture 2) along the way, and the shop that impressed me more that all the others was a traditional ‘calligraphy’ shop. That shop was small but was selling everything from brushes to calligraphy papers, in other words it was selling everything about calligraphy (picture 3 and 4).

It was nice to find Tokyo so diverse, everywhere you go there is something interesting to see and visit, so I decided to move on to the next adventure and went to get the subway (or underground for British-English speakers like me?).

Once inside the station, before going on the platform I noticed on the wall some traditional paintings, probably made during the Edo period. Tokyo used to be called Edo before becoming the capital of Japan. At that time Kyoto was the capital, and before Kyoto was Nara the capital (Nara is not too far from Kyoto, it is in Kansai area and I suggest the readers to visit it if you travel to Japan).

(Picture 5: Edo Period Painting)(Picture 6: Closer look at the Edo Period Painting)

Those paintings probably represent the everyday life of the Japanese people during that period and are totally different from the western paintings during the same period or even during any period. It is very interesting to compare the Japanese and western style of paintings.

Difference between Japanese and Western style paintings

Usually the figures of the people in the western paintings are big, in Japanese paintings the figures are much smaller and this style makes it possible to show the whole community in those large paintings. Yes, those paintings were quite large and probably have been drown using a different tissue and a different method of drawing and painting.

After taking a few photos to keep as my memory of Japan and to use for this blog I went to the platform waiting for the train that led me somewhere else. (Next…)

When I went back to the Ryokan from the pub on my second day in Japan, I got internet connection in my room through ADSL phone line. This was because the Ryokan didn’t offer wi-fi. I did a bit of research on internet where I could go the day after because it was going to be Monday and Mari had to work. I had to pass 2 full days in Tokyo by myself and meet Mari for dinner on Tuesday evening before leaving Tokyo for Kyoto.

I was willing to see if I could manage to see some cosplays and my research told me that I should go to Harajuku and looking on internet I found some other places to go, such as Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi department store and Ginza. After the research, I switched on the TV and watch a little bit of anime before going to bed. I had the whole night to think where to go first and how to plan my day, even though I really don’t like to plan in advance my travelling experience because I know that I can still find amazing places even without doing any research.

Monday morning travel

Looking at the train map in the morning, I realised that the best thing to do that made me waste less time, it was to visit the places that I had in my mind through a specific order, this would also allow me to visit more areas of London.

I decided that the first destination on my third day would be visiting one of the most imposing department stores in the world: Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi. Therefore, my first train stop would be Mitsukoshi Mae (or Mitsukoshimae) in the Nihonbashi area (‘Mae’ means ‘in front of’, ‘Nihon’ means ‘Japan’ and to be honest, I don’t know what ‘bashi’ means).

The travel has been a pleasant journey and looking outside of the window that monday morning, where the high rising building ended, the green of the Imperial Palace Garden started to show. At that point I realised that Tokyo was not only a city made from bricks and steel, but nature was also present in that amazing city. To make the journey more pleasant, the train that took me to destination was not crowded because I had just missed the rush hour so I could seat and relax on the train.

Imposing Building

I came out from the train station as soon as I arrived at destination. The exit was next to a big junction and in front of me, on the other side of the junction, I could see an imposing building, it was:

Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi department store!!!!

From the outside it looked impressive and perfect in design with its rounded front (as seen in picture 1).

(Picture 1: Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi)

Due to the large volume of traffic and waiting for the green traffic pedestrian light to come out, it took me few minutes to across the road (including the minute used to take the photo above).

Posh and Perfection

Once acrossed the road, I entered the building from the front door. Irasshaimase (welcome to our store) was heard from the people working as receptionists at the entrance. At that moment I realised that the interior must have been very posh. The receptionists were wearing smart and professional clothes.

Passed the reception, I decided to have a quick look at all floors. I didn’t get the chance to visit everything due to time constraint, however, I still managed to reach the top floor.

Everything inside the store seemed to be in the right place, if I have to name 1 or 2 department stores that can be compared, I would say Harrods and Selfridges in London. I didn’t really feel very comfortable to be inside a place like that and therefore my visit to the store was very short and I left soon after.

As soon as I left Mitsukoshi I decided to have a quick walk in the area surrounding. To my surprise, I managed to find traditional shops and restaurants (picture 2) along the way, and the shop that impressed me more that all the others was a traditional ‘calligraphy’ shop. That shop was small but was selling everything from brushes to calligraphy papers, in other words it was selling everything about calligraphy (picture 3 and 4).

It was nice to find Tokyo so diverse, everywhere you go there is something interesting to see and visit, so I decided to move on to the next adventure and went to get the subway (or underground for British-English speakers like me?).

Once inside the station, before going on the platform I noticed on the wall some traditional paintings, probably made during the Edo period. Tokyo used to be called Edo before becoming the capital of Japan. At that time Kyoto was the capital, and before Kyoto was Nara the capital (Nara is not too far from Kyoto, it is in Kansai area and I suggest the readers to visit it if you travel to Japan).

(Picture 5: Edo Period Painting)(Picture 6: Closer look at the Edo Period Painting)

Those paintings probably represent the everyday life of the Japanese people during that period and are totally different from the western paintings during the same period or even during any period. It is very interesting to compare the Japanese and western style of paintings.

Difference between Japanese and Western style paintings

Usually the figures of the people in the western paintings are big, in Japanese paintings the figures are much smaller and this style makes it possible to show the whole community in those large paintings. Yes, those paintings were quite large and probably have been drown using a different tissue and a different method of drawing and painting.

After taking a few photos to keep as my memory of Japan and to use for this blog I went to the platform waiting for the train that led me somewhere else. (Next…)

After visiting Mitsukoshi and the sorrounding area I decided to go to Ginza. I went there because the train map highlighted Ginza as one of the main areas in Tokyo.

Once I got out from Ginza station, I realised straight away that the area was posh. In fact, as soon as I went on the pavement from the station, I saw a massive department store called Matsuya Ginza

Picture 1: Matsuya Ginza Department Store

By the look of it, it looked like it would contain very expensive products, similar to those seen at Mitsukoshi department store. I decided not to enter that building on that occasion.

Other main shops

As I walked along the pavement, I could only see big expensive department stores and designer stores ranging from Tiffany to Gucci to Luis Vuitton and so on. I had to save money because I had to stay in Japan for 1 year without a job, so I decided not to buy anything. That was not the only reason why I didn’t buy anything. The other reason was because I could buy the same exact items back in London and there is no point to buy them there on my first day in Japan. I wanted to fully dive into the Japanese culture, that was one of the reasons why I choose Japan as my destination for my year abroad.

Picture 2: Tiffany Shop in GinzaPicture 3: A little bit of GinzaPicture 4: Japanese Style tooPicture 5: Better view to the Japanese style

33 Degrees!!!!!!!!!!

The temperature on that day just before the middle of September was very high and I felt very hot even thought I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

I just had a quick look at the area. And while I was approaching the train station to go to my next adventure, I saw almost on the top of a tall building a display indicating the temperature at that moment, the time was around 12 o’clock and the temperature was 33 degrees celsius. Surprised, I said: wow!!! I remembered that when I left London for Japan a few days earlier the temperature was about 10-11 degrees celsius. That was a massive difference in temperature dividing 2 of the greatest cities in the world set apart by thousands of miles.

Picture 6: Building recording the temperaturePicture 7: Clear display of the temperature

Due to the high temperature in that place, I felt my body sweating and became hungry. By the look of the area I thought if I was going to buy something to eat there I was going to break the bank so I decided to change destination and to leave Ginza after a short walk. (Read my next adventure)

When I went back to the Ryokan from the pub on my second day in Japan, I got internet connection in my room through ADSL phone line. This was because the Ryokan didn’t offer wi-fi. I did a bit of research on internet where I could go the day after because it was going to be Monday and Mari had to work. I had to pass 2 full days in Tokyo by myself and meet Mari for dinner on Tuesday evening before leaving Tokyo for Kyoto.

I was willing to see if I could manage to see some cosplays and my research told me that I should go to Harajuku and looking on internet I found some other places to go, such as Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi department store and Ginza. After the research, I switched on the TV and watch a little bit of anime before going to bed. I had the whole night to think where to go first and how to plan my day, even though I really don’t like to plan in advance my travelling experience because I know that I can still find amazing places even without doing any research.

Monday morning travel

Looking at the train map in the morning, I realised that the best thing to do that made me waste less time, it was to visit the places that I had in my mind through a specific order, this would also allow me to visit more areas of London.

I decided that the first destination on my third day would be visiting one of the most imposing department stores in the world: Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi. Therefore, my first train stop would be Mitsukoshi Mae (or Mitsukoshimae) in the Nihonbashi area (‘Mae’ means ‘in front of’, ‘Nihon’ means ‘Japan’ and to be honest, I don’t know what ‘bashi’ means).

The travel has been a pleasant journey and looking outside of the window that monday morning, where the high rising building ended, the green of the Imperial Palace Garden started to show. At that point I realised that Tokyo was not only a city made from bricks and steel, but nature was also present in that amazing city. To make the journey more pleasant, the train that took me to destination was not crowded because I had just missed the rush hour so I could seat and relax on the train.

Imposing Building

I came out from the train station as soon as I arrived at destination. The exit was next to a big junction and in front of me, on the other side of the junction, I could see an imposing building, it was:

Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi department store!!!!

From the outside it looked impressive and perfect in design with its rounded front (as seen in picture 1).

(Picture 1: Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi)

Due to the large volume of traffic and waiting for the green traffic pedestrian light to come out, it took me few minutes to across the road (including the minute used to take the photo above).

Posh and Perfection

Once acrossed the road, I entered the building from the front door. Irasshaimase (welcome to our store) was heard from the people working as receptionists at the entrance. At that moment I realised that the interior must have been very posh. The receptionists were wearing smart and professional clothes.

Passed the reception, I decided to have a quick look at all floors. I didn’t get the chance to visit everything due to time constraint, however, I still managed to reach the top floor.

Everything inside the store seemed to be in the right place, if I have to name 1 or 2 department stores that can be compared, I would say Harrods and Selfridges in London. I didn’t really feel very comfortable to be inside a place like that and therefore my visit to the store was very short and I left soon after.

After Ginza and before going to Harajuku, I decided to go to Akihabara by myself to have a look around and have lunch there. I wanted to take some photos at maid girls that were handing out leaflets for the maid cafes, but they told me that I was not allowed to do that. So I decided not to take photos in case they think that I am a stalker. After a short walk I decided to move away from the ‘maid area’.

Electric Building

Leaving the ‘maid area’ didn’t mean leaving Akihabara, but going to discover something different. As I mention in the ‘Akihabara: The Electric Town‘ post, I entered the building that has stairs that, from outside they look like Super Mario Bros’ pipes, but this time I decided to discover what was hidden on the other floors.

It didn’t take long to reach that building from where I was, to tell you the truth, I was there within 5 minutes.

Funny Looking Laptops

Once entered into that building, I took the ‘ pipe escalator’ to the other floors to see if they were going to sell items different from those found in UK. The most of the things are the same or very similar, however, what impressed me a lot was the thickness of the Japanese laptops. The screen part was about the same, however, the block of the laptop that holds the keyboard was much thicker.

I was really surprised about that and I was wondering why they were as thick. However, the thing that impressed me more than anything else was the design of the laptops. The design was far from futuristic, surprisingly, the design was very static, more similar to the old laptops that used to sell in the early 2000’s. For a country like Japan, where everyone think is ahead of the times, this has surprised me a lot.

Raw Egg

After a thorough investigation of the store, I decided to go nearby for a lunch. I found somewhere cheap where to eat, one of those places that can be found anywhere throughout Tokyo.

After choosing something from the vending machine, I went to look for a seat and waited for the waitress to come with the food to my table. The food I order was below the 600 yen mark and it included a bowl of rice, some sliced pork on top and an egg still inside the shell, I thought it was a boild egg.

I started eating the sliced pork and the rice first, then when the waitress came along, I asked how to eat the egg. The waitress she said to open it on top of the rice and so I did. When I broke the egg, I realised that it was still raw. I have never eaten in all my life a row egg. I thought if I was going to mix it with the hot rice, the egg was going to cook by itself. I was wrong but I decided to eat it anyway. Half a year later I found out that eating raw egg was part of the Japanese culture, in fact, Japanese eggs would not harm the health due to its freshness. ‘Tamago gohan’ is the raw egg served on top of a bowl of rice and then eaten, usually with a bit of Japanese soy sauce and a pinch of salt.

Really Hentai

After finished eating, I went to walk around the area to see what other things the place was offering. I turned into a narrow street and to my surprise I saw a 6 storie building ) that was selling exclusively only school girl uniforms. The six floors include the ground floor (in Japan the ground floor is considered as first floor unlike western countries) and in addition had the basement. Either that depato (department store in Japanese romanised) was selling uniforms for schools, or more probably it was selling uniforms mainly for cosplaying, or for the maids that were working in Akihabara, or maybe for certain men in order to satisfy their hentai fantasies, or maybe for all of those reasons. I could see on the windows some of the school uniforms displayed and on the ground floor there were some kids’ size anime stickers of school girls and magazine pages.

I was really surprised that a department store so big was selling just schoolgirl uniforms. I was really tempted to have a look inside but I decided to go against my temptation just in case people thought I was a hentai. Even though I was in the country famous for hentai (perverts, at least Japan is seen this way by westerners), I still didn’t know much about Japanese culture to consider to enter that store.

Hentai Building?

Tokyo never stopped fascinating me. Tokyo is a really marvellous city, even though many people think that Japan is a very strange country. At the end of the day I respect their culture and I would never change is because is so different from the west and I was sure that Japan was hiding more fascinating things and my staying in Japan had just started. (Next).